Hers To Keep: THE QUINTESSENCE COLLECTION I

by Akeroyd, Serena

  How could he do this to her? Make her want to laugh when she felt like her entire world was suddenly experiencing an earthquake?

  Her throat closed as laughter tried to spill from her lips, but he fucked the amusement out of her. When those short deep thrusts suddenly became long, slow impalements.

  Just as she was gasping for air, he mixed it up. Switching between the two until her body had no choice but to experience what he was willing to give her.

  And that was exactly it. Exactly what this was.

  His show.

  He was fully in control. So dominant in that moment, if she'd had the wherewithal, she would have questioned everything she knew about him. But as it was, she just had to go along with the ride.

  And what a ride.

  Just when she felt certain she could take no more, his free hand came down to pinch the top of her pussy, holding the bud of her clit captive as he fucked into her.

  Electricity flowed from his fingers to her. And like that, she was a goner.

  That electricity sparked through her veins, sinking into her muscles, sending them into spasms that fluttered around his shaft.

  For the first time since this had begun, he made a noise that was most definitely involuntary. A low, hoarse gasp that was the sweetest, purest music she'd ever heard. As her ears took part in the orgasm too, she soared freely for the first time in weeks. Since the last time one of her men had touched her.

  He sent her to the stars and back. Had her spiraling around as supernovas burst behind her eyes. Making her realize that this wasn't sex. This was a fucking opera.

  With music and majesty. And math.

  The random thought had laughter spilling from her as the sheer joy of the moment overwhelmed her, overtaking everything else, and making her purely, utterly, and irrevocably his.

  Seventeen

  “What the fuck is that woman still doing here?"

  Sawyer's lips twitched in response to Sascha's demand. He wasn't the only one amused. Sean had to cough to hide his laughter, before he said, "It was only for last night. I'm going to arrange a hotel room for tonight."

  Her nostrils flared as she gritted out, "Good. She's already put a request in for French press coffee with whipped cream, as well as a continental breakfast. I didn't realize we were offering stray cats room for the night."

  Kurt chuckled. "Good one, Sascha."

  "Stop finding it funny. All of you." She planted her bad hand on her hip and looked set to pull an all-out tantrum as she demanded, "Are you seriously going to help her? After everything she did to Kurt?"

  Sawyer clambered to his feet, strode to the door so he could slide an arm around her waist and jerk her into his side. Pressing a kiss to her temple, he teased, "Now, now, don't let jealousy get in the way of being charitable." Not that he blamed her. If anything, he was yanking her chain to see that fire sparkle in her eyes—fuck, the lass was hot when she was angry.

  Of the five men, he was the least charitable of the lot of them, so he understood her agitation. He’d have tossed Katrin out on her ear last night. Wicked witches had a tendency of falling on their feet—just like the stray cat she’d likened Katrin to.

  She shot him a glower, then pouted. "I can totally be jealous. That woman fucked Kurt. And Andrei, damn it. Plus, she's ordering me around like I’m the help." She waved a finger at him. "Don't even say that that's because I am the help."

  He grabbed her finger, raised it to his mouth, and nipped the tip. "As if I'd dare," he declared dramatically.

  She grinned at him. Then it flushed away as though it had never existed, and she glared at him instead. Her defiance had his cock hardening, and considering he knew Devon had been inside her that morning, he wanted to knock the papers off Sean’s desk and take her there and then.

  She’d feel like fucking heaven... slick and warm and—he stopped his thoughts in their tracks. He couldn’t afford to have a hard on with her in this mood. One didn’t tempt a Mother Hen intent on defending her flock.

  And that was what she was doing—defending her men.

  Protecting them when they were supposed to be protecting her. Goddammit. Was it any wonder she confused the hell out of him? Made him think and feel shit he’d never felt before?

  Before he could freak out, she growled under her breath. “I don't like her," she spat, mostly at him, but at the others too if her equally defiant glare was anything to go by.

  Devon snorted. "None of us do."

  Rather than throw water onto the flames, Devon’s words were more like gasoline. "Then what the fuck is she doing here?" she shrieked.

  Sean grimaced. "Andrei is going to look into her accounts. By the sounds of it, her financial consultant has done a pretty good job of clearing her out."

  "Seriously?" She bit her lip, and Sawyer hid his grin in her throat as he ducked down and licked a spot where Devon had obviously bitten her earlier. It was pink from his teeth still, but growing dark from having been sucked. Knowing Devon, she’d be covered in hickeys. At his touch, she shivered, whacked him with her good arm, and grumbled, "I've already been tortured once today."

  Andrei snickered. "It's always the quiet ones."

  "That would make sense. If Devon was quiet. Which he totally isn’t," she retorted huffily.

  Sean cleared his throat. "To get back to the subject at hand, we’re helping as much as we have to to get rid of her."

  "Now that is what I want to hear," she stated with a feline smile. Pressing a kiss to Sawyer's cheek, she wiggled out of his arms, and strode across the room to Sean.

  He rolled away from the desk so Sascha could take a seat on his lap. She curled her good arm about his neck and snuggled into him. He kissed her cheek and let his hand fall on her stomach.

  Sawyer retreated to his armchair and looked over the scene.

  Everyone was in Sean's office, having fled here to make plans without the females in the house overhearing. Truth was, they were fortunate she hadn't overheard their previous conversation. If she had, it would have opened a can of worms that none of them were ready to explain.

  As he looked at the ease in which Sean and Sascha sat together, an ease she was developing with the five of them, each unit evolving in their own unique way, he'd admit, the sight filled him with warmth.

  Sawyer wasn't particularly in touch with his emotions. If anything, of the lot of them, he found it the hardest to open up. There was no particular reason for it. He'd had a good, if poor, childhood. Loving parents, a big extended family that had always shown him affection. Of them all, though he’d had the least growing up where money was concerned, he was the wealthiest when it came down to family.

  Sean's parents were snobs. While he and his father got on well, Sean's mother, Deirdre, was dead certain Sean was having a gay relationship with one of them. As a result, she refused to step foot in the house.

  Like that was a punishment.

  Devon's parents were dead. His father, an officer in the army, was a bastard. He'd beaten Devon's mother, and though he hadn't slit her wrists for her, the psychological torment he'd put the poor woman through was undoubtedly the reason for her suicide. The minute Devon had been of legal age, he’d left his father behind, and hadn't even gone to the man's funeral after he'd died in an insurgent’s attack in Baghdad.

  Kurt's mother was a pain in the ass. Like Deirdre, the notion she had a gay son was more terrifying than anything else in this world. She'd set the poor bastard up with Katrin. A punishment no man deserved.

  Well, maybe Devon's dad.

  Kurt's father and grandfather had been tortured by the Stasi. When the Berlin Wall had come tumbling down, his dad had been released from 'custody’, but he'd been beyond fucked up. Though he was still alive, Kurt rarely heard from him. Margritte lived with the man, and probably barely saw him. The man was like a ghost. One left to deal with the haunting of his memories from the horrors he'd endured.

  Of them all, Andrei was the worst off. His mother had been the mistress of a high
-ranking Bratva Soldier, and he was the result of that relationship. A Brigadier, Andrei’s father had immense power in their town. When he'd murdered Andrei’s mother, the deed had gone unpunished. Andrei’s grandfather, the Pakhan and head of the Bratva division in his town, had learned of his existence and brought a seven-year-old Andrei into a fucked-up home and hearth where blood was spilled on a regular basis, and honor was tied with obeisance.

  Though his childhood had been so far out of the norm than anyone could begin to imagine, Andrei loathed his father, but loved his grandfather.

  His ties to the Bratva had been working against him of late. Though he was clean, and had no dealings with the Russian Mafia, his name said otherwise. It was why he'd been working with Jacobie.

  Andrei, like himself and Devon, enjoyed math. For the three of them, it was their lifeblood. He and Devon worked in different spheres, where Andrei used it to discover market trends. Because Russia wasn't popular at the moment, he'd found it hard to ply his trade. Linking up with Jacobie, he'd worked a miracle. Though he downplayed his recent work, the implications of the software he’d developed with the tech mogul were huge.

  As Sawyer contemplated the tableau of fucked-up-ness the five of them represented, he had to wonder what level of batshit Sascha was bringing to the table. She definitely had skeletons in her closet—someone had tried to kill her, after all.

  Didn’t get much more fucked up than that.

  “Why are we all in here anyway?” she grumbled, breaking into his thoughts after she pressed a kiss to Sean’s cheek. “We’re normally down in the kitchen at this time.”

  “We weren’t sure if the Wicked Witch would go down there, too.”

  “So, you thought you’d leave me to deal with her?” She scowled. “And we were getting along so well. Expect salt in your coffee today.”

  Kurt chuckled but reasoned, “Devon said you were out for the count.”

  “I was. Now I’m not. And considering you were foolish enough to marry her, Kurt, you can come and run interference.” Her eyes narrowed. “If the bitch thinks she can look at me like I’m shit on her shoes, she’s mistaken.”

  Though the terminology amused him, the meaning did not. “What did she say?” he demanded, his voice a half growl. He’d put up with so much, but if Katrin was saying shit to Sascha, that was it. She was out on her ass. Designer skirt be damned.

  “Just impugned my heritage,” came the complaint, but she was still blowing hot air, not genuinely offended so that was something.

  “Katrin doesn’t like Americans,” Kurt murmured, tone apologetic.

  “I received that memo loud and clear,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “You don’t have to make her breakfast, Sascha,” Sean said gently, hugging her to him.

  “It’s my job,” she countered.

  “Yes, but you’re more than the job now, aren’t you?”

  She cocked a brow at him. “If I wasn’t in a position where I could come and sit on your knee, would you have asked me to make breakfast for Katrin?”

  He grimaced. “Maybe. But it’s different. Not just out of nepotism, either. When she slates you, she slates us. We’re a package deal.”

  “The bitch is lucky she got to spend the night,” Andrei grumbled, his focus on the cellphone in his hand. The scowl told Sawyer he was reading something serious enough to concern him.

  Andrei was a weird bastard.

  Sawyer loved him, but that just meant he could embrace the man’s oddities rather than be perturbed by him.

  After a childhood like his, maybe it made sense that little affected him. Or maybe it was simply his nationality that made him so fucking stoic. All he knew was that a scowl on Andrei’s brow was the equivalent to an out-and-out show of rage on another guy.

  Considering they’d been discussing Sascha before, and as the topic of her past was very much an ongoing thread of conversation, he decided to leave Andrei to his scowl while she was in the room. The last thing he wanted was to start up a conversation none of them were ready to have with her yet.

  Devon, not sensing the undercurrents in the room, murmured, “Lucky isn’t the word, Andrei.”

  “Don’t be pedantic,” Sawyer stated in a bored tone. Those were three words that were repeated often under this roof.

  “I’m not. How can it be lucky when Sean gave her permission to stay here?”

  “He’s right,” Sascha stated, then poked Sean in the shoulder. “You shouldn’t have given her permission, Mr. Principal.”

  Sawyer snorted. “We don’t call them that.”

  She frowned. “What do you call them?”

  “Headmasters or headteachers,” Sean answered, as he reached for the finger she was using to prod him and pressed a kiss to the tip. “I couldn’t see her out on the streets, could I?”

  She grunted. “No. But I’ll kick her butt out if she maligns the way I make coffee.”

  “Fair’s fair,” he teased.

  Another huff. “How can she be so poor anyway? Her shoes are like three mortgage payments. And did you see her luggage? It’s Vuitton!”

  Andrei peered up from his phone. “I’m working on it.”

  “Working on what?”

  Sawyer’s brow puckered. “How much do you remember of last night’s conversation?”

  She rubbed at her temple. “Not a lot by the sounds of it. Mostly that she thinks her hedge fund manager is robbing her?”

  “He is,” Andrei retorted, shooting her a look.

  Interested, Sean asked, “Have you found his location?”

  “No. But I’m working on finding the accounts.”

  Kurt, obviously bored with the financials, stood, and stretched, leaving his armchair vacant. They all had their spots in this room. Only Sascha didn’t… but then, she had five laps to choose from, he thought wryly.

  “Come on, I shall protect you from the ogress,” he told Sascha with a grin.

  “Hey, don’t have a go at Fiona,” she chided. “I liked her. And Shrek too.”

  Kurt blinked. “You know what I mean.”

  She grinned. “I like what Sawyer calls her. Devon told me this morning.”

  “The Wicked Witch of West Germany is the full phrase,” he divulged, waggling his eyebrows at her.

  She giggled. “Even better. I’ll call her that if she pisses me off.” She wriggled off Sean’s lap after giving him a quick kiss, then strode to Kurt’s side. Sliding her arm around his waist, she asked, “Everyone want the usual for breakfast?”

  To a chorus of yeses, they left, leaving the room a lot emptier than it had been moments before.

  He grimaced at the thought. This sentimentality was growing tedious. It was Sascha’s fault, not that she could be blamed for it totally.

  Did it disturb him that of all the women they’d shared this way, Sascha was the only one who’d inspired these kinds of weird feelings in him?

  Sure, it did.

  It concerned him more that someone was willing to kill her by murdering innocent pedestrians, and by blowing up a fucking event hall, though. Concern, he was learning, was a relative concept.

  “What were you frowning at?” he asked of Andrei, his thoughts a natural segue to the question.

  “Something I was reading about Jacobie.”

  “What about him?”

  “About his ancestry, that’s all.”

  “And you were frowning, because?”

  Andrei shrugged. “I didn’t realize his family worked for him.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Sean asked.

  “I don’t know. We worked closely together,” Andrei explained, his gaze still on his cell. “Hell, work. But he never said anything about that. According to this report, his sister is his PA.”

  “I’m failing to see a link here.”

  Andrei peered at him. “There isn’t one. I just thought it was odd, that’s all.”

  “If he can keep that secret, what else can he hide?” Devon intoned, as usual, man
aging to hit the nail on the head while looking totally bored shitless as he did so.

  Looking out of the window onto the yard, Devon was staring into the distance. Knowing him, he was probably working through an equation as he sat there. Even after all these years, the way Devon could process shit still astonished him. The man made an onion look one-dimensional.

  Andrei nodded at Devon’s concise remark. “That’s it, exactly.”

  Sean shrugged. “Let’s get back to the matter in hand though, eh? While we know Kurt’s keeping her busy?”

  Sawyer nodded. “So, Marks still hasn’t said a word?” Marks was the guy who’d been hired by only God knew who to murder Sascha.

  “No. Nothing since he admitted to his true crime.”

  Sawyer rubbed his nose. “I still don’t get why he confessed to it. It wasn’t like the police were even going to arrest him. He braked before impact. It wasn’t like he was trying to run her down at that point.” Sascha had run into the road to stop a kid, who’d seen something shiny and had charged into oncoming traffic to get it. The car had glanced off her, causing so-called minor injuries that left her with the headaches she was enduring at the moment.

  Minor, my ass, Sawyer thought.

  Sean rested his head back against the desk chair. “That’s just one of the many fucking questions roaming around my brain. We have an American citizen who’s lived in the UK for over five years with no issue. Then, she comes and works for us, and suddenly she’s the target of some crazy plot.

  “A man is hired to mow her down, with the purpose of making it look like a terror attack on the city streets. When that plan is stopped in its tracks because of a little kid running into the street and Sascha rushing off after him to save his butt, rather than regrouping, the driver hands himself into the police. Confesses to his purpose, then stays quiet. Doesn’t utter a word. Doesn’t even ask for a lawyer, for fuck’s sake.

  “Two days later, the gala Andrei RSVPed Sascha at, blows up during preparation. But the timer shows it was supposed to blast during Andrei’s keynote speech…”